Lit 






Class 
Book__S-^ — 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Little Talks on 
School Management 



By 
RANDALL N. SAUNDERS 

School Commissioner First District 
Claverack, New York 




NEW YORK 
A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 



>> 



lUSR^BYofCQf^eHESS 

iTwo Copies Received 
DEC 13 1906 

' /JCrOpyright Entry , 
QlhSB ^ A xxc, na. 



^Jj 30lf 




Copyright, 1906, by 
A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 

New York 



TO 

MR. OSSIAN LANG 

IN HUMBLE RECOGNITION OF HIS 
VALUABLE EDITORIAL SERVICES IN 
THE CAUSE OF EDUCATION, AND 
AS A MODEST TOKEN OF THE AU- 
THOr's PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP 
AND APPRECIATION. 



PREFACE 

I AM asked to write a fore-word for this 
little volume, and I scarcely know what to 
say. It seems to me to be a bootless task ; 
for, in the guilty knowledge that I seldom 
read a "Preface," I imagine that the ma- 
jority of readers are hke myself and are 
more anxious to know what the author has 
to say in the intentional part of the work 
that is the real occasion for the publica- 
tion. There is an object in the' pages which 
follow, and you are at liberty to drop this 
and turn to them at once. In them I have 
striven to give briefly a history of the 
things that helped me in my work as a 
primary teacher, and I have striven to 
make the "talks" practical and also inspi- 
rational. All but one of the chapters, or 
divisions, of the little book have been pub- 
lished in the pages of educational periodi- 
cals, and I am happy to say that I have 
received commendation for them from 
teachers of experience, as well as from 
those who have but recently entered the 



6 PREFACE 

profession. I know, from experience, that 
no matter how thoroughly one has been 
prepared — no matter how much experience 
one has had — in managing a school and in 
attempting to influence a community, a 
thousand and one problems will arise to 
test ingenuity and demand solution. "In 
a multitude of counselors there is 
strength," and if this little book, as one, 
shall be found, in the slightest degree, sug- 
gestive and helpful, its mission will have 
been fulfilled and its author rewarded, in 
addition to the pleasure he has derived 
from the labor expended in its prepara- 
tion. THE AUTHOR. 
Hudson, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Before School 9 

II. Opening Exercises 13 

III. Getting to Work 17 

IV. Classes and Divisions 21 

V. Keeping Pupils Busy 26 

VI. Eecesses 30 

VII. Unifying the School 34 

VIII. Parental Co-operation 39 

IX. Assistance from Pupils 44 

X. Journalism in a District School. 49 

XI. Character in Hiding 34 

XII. Our Glorious Heritage 57 

XIII. Education for Usefulness 60 

XIV. Home Lessons. 64 



Little Talks on School 
Management 



BEFORE SCHOOL 

I AM satisfied that the moments spent by 
both teacher and pupil before school have 
a great influence on the character of the 
sessions. The good feeling — or the ill feel- 
ing, that may be engendered in those mo- 
ments of relaxed tension when the pupils 
are left largely to follow their own inclina- 
tions, will surely follow thru the day and 
be manifested in every exercise and recita- 
tion. 

If the day has opened with an alterca- 
tion in the school yard, if it has opened 
with some trespass that demands a trial 
and a punishment, a spirit of controversy, 
of revenge, of sadness, or of sulkiness will 
pervade the whole day and destroy the pos- 
sibility of getting the best results from that 
day's work. On the other hand, if the day 
be opened in the schoolyard with some 
game in which all have been interested and 

9 



10 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

all have enjoyed, and the pupils come in 
tired for the moment, with that dangerous 
superabundance of animal spirits in a 
measure reduced, and with the glow of the 
brisk pleasure still in their hearts and on 
their faces, that day will have a briskness 
and a glow that will be inspiring to both 
teacher and pupil, and the teacher will close 
his room with a feeling so seldom experi- 
enced, that the day has approached the 
ideal. 

There is always an unknown quantity in 
the daily experience of many teachers — a 
quantity that exhausts nervous force, en- 
genders senseless apprehension, and is par- 
alyzing to the best effort. This quantity 
is found in the equation, "X equals 'what's 
coming next'," and the constant dread of 
the solution has been the hete noire that 
has frightened many a teacher from the 
profession. 

It strikes me that one of the prime 
requisites for a successful teacher is ubiq- 
uity, that omnipresence that will enable him 
to anticipate the events of the day, dissi- 
pating the potentiality of the problem by 
being "on deck" first, last, and all the time, 
having a thoro knowledge of the "what 
next" by guiding the impulses that influ- 
ence its production. In many years' expe- 
rience, I have found that the moments I 
spent with my boys and girls "before 
school" were the most valuable moments of 
the day. There will be little likelihood of 



BEFORE SCHOOL 11 

flagrant transgressions under the eye of a 
kindly but inflexible teacher. His pres- 
ence alone, among the boys and girls while 
at play, is a safeguard, even tho he be 
meditative and seemingly oblivious of what 
is going on. And what may not his in- 
fluence be if he joins heartily in the play? 

Whenever I came out in the spring with 
a hastily fashioned kite or a pair of tempt- 
ingly treacherous stilts, I was at once the 
centre of an expectant group, anxious to 
see me do something which I did not, for I 
entrusted the trial of all contrivances to 
the many who were willing to experiment. 
Need I say that the girls were treated to 
paper doll dresses that would have made 
Worth green with envy? 

To ball and bat, to croquet and other 
out-of-door games, to snow forts and snow 
men, to conundrums, to quiet "sitting 
down" games "before school," I attribute 
many of the "best" days for which we ever 
long. Such days I sincerely believe are 
to be largely attained thru the "before 
school" influence of the teacher's interested 
presence among his pupils, with them, heart 
and hand, in everything, as a good, but not 
a goody-good child (?) himself, instruct- 
ing, by active example, controlling by un- 
ostentatious assumption of the leadership 
when the game evinces alarming tendencies. 

That group of idle boys, over there, with 
their heads together, giggling and sly- 
glancing, without plot or intention are con- 



12 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

cocting that which in its influence will make 
your school-room a miniature sheol for the 
whole day. Get them busy without delay. 
There is still another phase of the sub- 
ject, on which just a word, and that only 
a question. Will not the teacher be fresher, 
better tempered, and less likely to make the 
very errors against which he would guard, 
if he spends a portion of the play time on 
the play ground? 



II 

OPENING EXERCISES 

A moment's calm after the pupils are 
seated tends to ensure a receptive attitude 
in schools where the opening exercises are 
varied and the discipline is good. With 
the pupil fresh from exercise, that moment 
of expectant tranquillity is the opened 
vestibule for the earnest introduction of 
some sweet or noble guest of thought to 
the passive mind, ere the workmen, duties 
of the day or of the session, throng to their 
places. 

As we have staples of diet ever present 
at the table, so I believe that the Great 
Teacher's injunction should be followed, in 
a^broad and non-sectarian sense, and that 
His lambs should regularly be fed the bread 
of life without sermon or sanctimonious- 
ness. The reading of the Bible, the great- 
est code of ethics and the grandest litera- 
ture ever compiled, was the one staple ever 
present, and I always strove to make the 
morning lesson from the book of books one 
of the most interesting of the day. Rev- 
erence for things considered holy and to be 
respected, a reverence so much needed at 
the present time, — will grow out of the 
manner in which this thing is done. Treat 

13 



14 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

the book with care, — put feehng into the 
rendition of its passages, and the children 
will catch the spirit of reverence and re- 
flect, but don't be sanctimonious or you 
will be promptly and properly suspected, 
and the good influence to be desired will 
be dissipated. 

I varied the reading of the Bible. For 
a week (for illustration) we would read 
the First Psalm every morning, or until we 
could repeat it from memory. In this way, 
in time, a school would learn many of the 
shorter songs of David and other short 
selections. Then, again, I would select a 
portion, reading it a few lines at a time, 
the lines to be repeated by the school, — a 
short responsive exercise that is good for 
fixing attention and that was most thoroly 
enjoyed whenever I used it. Then, again, 
I asked some of the older boys and girls 
occasionally to read, and being selected to 
read was always treated as a privilege, — 
a responsibility, — and the reading, without 
an exception, was always conducted in a 
manner nowise lowering the dignity of the 
office. 

Sometimes the Bible text suggested an 
ethical lesson to be briefly and beneficially 
developed, and sometimes the text was 
chosen for the ethical lesson it contained 
and which I had in mind as needed by the 
school. We were like a big family at this 
exercise, and seldom did any mischief creep 
in to mar it all. 



OPENING EXERCISES 15. 

I 

As to the singing. In some schools I 
had an instrument, and was fortunate in 
having several girls in each to play for 
me. Altho I knew something of both vocal 
and instrumental music, I believed that it 
was far better to employ the talents about 
me rather than to display those I possessed. 
It is better to have boys and girls beg a 
musical treat (?) from you than to become 
a bore by constantly doing something that 
several in your school can do as well so far 
as the simple needs demand. 

We varied our singing. The morning 
song would be in character a hymn, stirring 
or tender as the mood of the morning 
needed guiding, or as the nature of the 
Bible reading or the ethical lesson demand- 
ed. A song from the song book, patriotic 
or sentimental, opened the afternoon exer- 
cises, and this was varied occasionally by 
a solo or a duo, if I had a prospective "bella 
donna" or two among my charges. A short 
nature or information lesson followed the 
song, and I found my boys and girls never 
weary of learning facts, developed if pos- 
sible thru objects, about the animals and 
things by which they were surrounded. 

At this time boys and girls were given 
commissions of exploration and investiga- 
tion, and at this time reports of research 
and expeditions were received. There could 
be, of course, no routine, — no succession, — 
no regular method ; but rather an irregular 
method that was more effective from its 



16 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

very variability and novelty. At this time, 
new inventions and discoveries were ex- 
plained briefly, and discussed in regard to 
their value to the world; and every day I 
demanded of each pupil old enough to read 
the papers a news item (excluding all rec- 
ord of crime), the more important of which 
received a word of comment. 

Thus varied and conducted, my opening 
exercises were often the green spots in 
many a desert day, and I believe that they 
watered and made fertile many a day that 
would have been an arid Sahara without 
them. They engendered the growth and 
strengthening of attention, reverence and 
cheerfulness ; three buds that are often 
blighted by a sharp rattling hail of fixed 
routine or a cold air of indifference at the 
very threshold of the dawn. 



Ill 

GETTING TO WORK 

I ASSUME that you agree with me that 
little of permanent value can be accom- 
plished in school work without good order. 
The secret of obtaining this without being 
"cursed for a tyrant or kicked for a tool" 
is almost as difficult of discovery, for those 
who have it not, as the fabled philosopher's 
stone; and those who have become pos- 
sessors of this magic property of turning 
all to bright and pleasing gold find it as 
difficult of description as it was of dis- 
covery. Yet this power can be attained, 
and quickly, by one who has a natural en- 
dowment for leadership, and also by one 
who is under good self-control and prac- 
tices exactly what he preaches. 

In a well regulated school the pupils 
come in quietly when the bell rings, without 
laughter, giggling or talking across the 
seats. After the opening exercises there 
are two ways of getting to work: One of 
a careless, noisy, petulant preparation, a 
hunting up of books, a sharpening of pen- 
cils, the doing of a hundred things that 
should have been done before sehool and 
that keeps the room in an uproar for from 

IT 



18 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

five to fifteen minutes, while the teacher 
stands helplessly rapping for calm; the 
other, of a quiet, orderly taking up of the 
implements at hand for use in the tasks of 
the session. For the attainment and main- 
taining of this latter condition we must 
strive. 

What a shock it gives a school undis- 
ciplined to have an order compelling teachr 
er take control ! How injured the big boys 
look when they find they cannot go for the 
neglected pail of water! How dreadfully 
uncomfortable the hot, fussy, red-faced 
children look when they find they cannot 
spend ten or fifteen minutes quarreling and 
splashing like greedy ducklings about the 
water pail, each in order or rather in dis- 
order, to guzzle down a dipperful of water 
for no other purpose than to kill time! 
How they make blunt pencils squeak ! How 
they will idle for want of the book for 
which they are not allowed to turn the 
school-room topsy turvy, and how the tardy 
ones open their eyes to find their lost time 
charged up to them, to be made up out of 
play time — in short, how these little ob- 
structionists will squirm and kick until they 
are satisfied that order is inevitable, and 
that the teacher is as kindly and inflexible 
as the power that brings in the days and 
the seasons with benign and undisturbed 
regularity. 

It takes but a short time to create a "new 
heaven and a new earth" out of such a little 



GETTING TO WORK 19 

chaos — a new regime of neatness, quiet, 
and punctuality that enables the teacher 
at five or ten minutes past nine to view his 
little charge silently at its individual tasks. 

You demand that everything be in readi- 
ness. Desks in order, books arranged, pen- 
cils sharpened, hair combed, hands washed, 
thirst assuaged — everything in readiness 
for taking up the work of the session ; and, 
when this condition has been attained, there 
is nothing^ under the sun left to do after 
the opening exercises but to go to work. 

Boys and girls are not infallible, neither 
is it to be expected that they will always 
be thoughtful, and, as one does not wish 
to seem unreasonable and may even desire 
to be indulgent, I have found that a warn- 
ing bell rung five or ten minutes before 
the final call is an excellent means of re- 
minding all of duties unperformed, while 
it removes often the necessity of speaking, 
and leaves no possible excuse for the pupils' 
not being prepared for work at the proper 
time. 

Perfection in any condition will ever re- 
main an ideal, yet it is worthy of a per- 
sistent attempt at attainment. There will 
always be the boy or the girl who dislikes 
school, and is forever tardy ; there will ever 
be the innocently forgetful to deprive whom 
of some prized pleasure will bring tears to 
your own eyes; there will ever be the per- 
sistent one who spends the largest part of 
the time inventing excuses for breaking in 



20 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

on the regular order ; but, by witchcraft (I 
have grave doubts about the value of 
switchcraft at any time), you may get 
these discordant elements harmonized — in- 
spired with your own zeal for the general 
good, and make of them aids instead of 
hindrances in your plan, plea, and progress 
for good order. 

There will ever be lots of little things 
to keep the school-house about seven doors 
below Paradise ; but with the good Persian, 
you can walk the bridge Chinvat, which is 
said to be a hair in width, and ever strive 
with the Divs and the Jinns of disorder for 
the peace of your soul. 



IV 
CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 

In ungraded country schools, the prob- 
lem of keeping down the number of classes 
and of arranging divisions is one that gives 
the teacher no little trouble and anxiety. 

The country school, offering unre- 
strained an opportunity for the individu- 
ality of the teacher and the individualities 
of the pupils as well, is likely, in the matter 
of classes and divisions, to assume a ka- 
leidoscopic character, — ever changing in 
relation to the punctuality, ability, and ap- 
plication or energy of the various pupils. 

In a graded school, where the teacher is 
a part of a mechanism that turns off so 
many pages in so many days, regardless 
of the fact that some pupils are overwork- 
ing at the same task that others find mere 
play, regardless of the fact that the slow 
ones are constantly discouraged and the 
bright ones are forming habits of hstless- 
ness, there is no room left for the exercise 
of the discretion with which the rural edu- 
cator attempts to harmonize these inequali- 
ties and to reconcile many an inconsistency. 
The smaller the school and the closer the 
contact of teacher and pupil, the more com- 
plex becomes the problem, until, in some 

21 



22 SCHOOIi MANAGEMENT 

instances, classes cease to exist altogether 
in many of the more difficult studies. 

While we can not find it in our hearts to 
retard the progress of some exceptionally 
bright pupils we should not forget to stir 
the exceptionally dull ones to greater effort 
to keep pace, and even then we can scarcely 
avoid a division of the class which must in- 
evitably come. At this point, when it is 
reached, to avoid multiplying classes, I 
have dropped the slower pupils into the 
brighter division of the class in the next 
lower grade, — in fact, to preserve harmony 
in the homes and in school, have made this 
measure an apparent elevation of the bril- 
liants into a higher grade. 

Comphcating the problem in rural 
schools is the diversity of text-books, ren- 
dering special lessons necessary. After 
determining the grading and finding many 
different books in some one class, I have 
found that to teach without a book was a 
course that, while it necessitated some extra 
preparation, obviated the necessity for sep- 
arate recitations. 

To develop a recitation and not have it a 
mere fact-mill for a two, three, or five min- 
utes revolution turning out dust and ashes, 
one must have time, and to get time a re- 
duction of the number of classes and an 
increase of general exercises, — lessons in 
which the greater part of the pupils can 
join, — should be made. 

With forty classes, with varying text- 



CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 23 

books, inequalities in age, attainment, and 
ability, and with special subjects asked and 
needed by special pupils, — with forty 
classes, or thirty classes to manage, what 
justice can be done to any one of them, or 
to any individual in any one of them ? With 
a doubling up of some of the classes, with 
a combination of correlated subjects, with 
a discarding of some extras that could not 
be continued, with a revolution that deposed 
some old, cherished methods from the throne 
beneath the popular dome of thought, I 
was not spared the consequences of my ig- 
norance and mismanagement, and closed 
my first year of teaching with twenty 
classes and a case of fever that made me 
a better student of economy, — school and 
physical economy combined. 

I think we should not deny ourselves the 
privilege, which is a duty, with the Hberty 
we have in this country, of advancing as 
far as possible the brighter pupils, nor do 
I think we should deny ourselves the pleas- 
ure of stimulating and gratifying some 
natural talent of some thoughtful lad or 
lass with a special subject outside of the 
ordinary curriculum, provided we can find 
the time for it. The country teacher has 
an added responsibility not so strongly felt 
by the city teacher. The main burden on 
the mind of the average urban teacher is 
the passing of a certain percentage of her 
grade for promotion, knowing that the 
greater need of her pupils will be supplied 



24 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

in the order of their ascent toward gradua- 
tion; but the rural teacher is handhng all 
grades, and, if true to her trust, is ever 
yearning to awaken the spirit that is like 
the electric flash to the mingled but unseen 
gases, unrealized, uncentred, and uncon- 
trolled powers, that it unites into a crystal 
drop reflecting the universe and dazzling 
with a brilliance more to be desired and be- 
yond that of the diamond. The country 
teacher has the responsibility of awakening 
and centering the powers and ambitions of 
"the great minds, brave hearts, strong and 
willing hands an age like this demands," 
and this responsibility must not be shirked 
or neglected. 

There is a class of pupils, the irregular 
ones, who multiply classes and perplexities. 
They are a class to which I have shown 
few favors, unless the pupils were unfor- 
tunately kept out of school by necessity. 
That being the case, they received every 
attention I could possibly bestow when 
they were able to attend. Irregularity is 
usually the fault of the parents, and if they 
do not have more interest in the future of 
their children than to allow them to ignore 
advantages, I do not believe it is the teach- 
er's duty to retard the progress of others 
for their benefit. 

If you become wise unto your own salva- 
tion and institute a new order, make use 
of every available time-saving method. 
You may fear the loss of popular favor; 



CLASSES AND DIVISIONS 25 

but duty to yourself and to your school 
may demand such a sacrifice, which will 
be lighter than you imagine. In fact, a 
gain in favor will be made if methods in- 
telhgently applied bring, as they will, re- 
sults to be desired. Find comfort in Schil- 
ler's thought, as favor is accorded : "If by 
your art you cannot please all, content the 
few. To please the multitude is bad." 
Among "the few" count yourself the first 
to be contented. 



V 

KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 

The inexperienced teacher, tho "to the 
manor bom," — tho thoroly qualified edu- 
cationally, — tho zealous and conscientious, 
will puzzle over the spirit of unrest, of list- 
lessness, of consummate deviltry that again 
and again will pervade the school-room to 
paralyze endeavor and create disorder. 
Often, in such cases, by the exercise of a 
little ingenuity, or thru a knowledge of 
common helps at hand or easily accessible, 
the strain on nerves could be relaxed by 
occupying the wandering or exuberant 
energy with novel and educating tasks. 

I assume that we all realize the bearing 
on good order and good work that is had 
by a judicious seating of the pupils. If 
our seating is not done with reference to 
the natures, temperaments, and discovered 
habits, which we desire, in a measure, to 
balance by bringing, so far as we can, op- 
posites into correcting contact, we might 
plan to have all of our work "busy work" 
and then fail of attaining the object at 
which we are aiming. 

I assume also that we have our higher 
grades so interested in the "business" of 

26 



KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 27 

school that we are seldom, if ever, forced 
to resort to pedagogical "sleight-of-hand" 
to lure them back into the path of rectitude. 

With my older boys and girls, I have 
seldom had much occasion to consider the 
question, aside from regular tasks present- 
ing sufficient variety in the course of prog- 
ress to keep them "busy." But occa- 
sionally I have had pupils who were extra- 
ordinary and very active, and have suc- 
ceeded with history and historical romance 
in keeping them interested and occupied in 
moments that without such helps would 
have been spent in idleness. While I had 
no regularly appointed reading table, such 
as has been successfully used by many 
teachers and is to be recommended, I al- 
ways had a large number of magazines and 
the better class of papers which served a 
good purpose for those able to make use of 
them in unoccupied periods. 

The nature of "busy work" in the lower 
grades must be carefully studied. In fact, 
the teacher, like the chess player, should 
make no move for which he cannot clearly 
give good reasons. He should aim to have 
this "busy" work bear on the evolution, — 
the education, of the child mind. Any- 
thing that will lead pupils to think while 
keeping their attention and occupying their 
hands ; anything that will lead to a cultiva- 
tion of the senses, quickening sight, touch, 
smell, taste ; anything developing ingenuity 
and an exercise of the powers of observa- 



^8 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

tion and expression is permissible and only 
advisable. But anything done without a 
method under the seeming "madness" — as 
much of tliis play with sticks, pictures and 
color and letter cards would be called in 
rural districts, — anything done merely to 
kill and not beneficially to fill time, would 
better be left undone, as it would tend to 
shatter the powers which it is desired to 
strengthen and concentrate. 

It is not permitted me here to go into 
detail regarding helps or apparatus for 
"busy work." There are many excellent 
works published on the subject and much 
assistance will be found in the pages of 
Teachers Magazine, where also stimulus 
to individual and original invention will be 
found. Let me say that it is not necessary 
to have expensive paraphernalia, for good 
results can be gotten from a bundle of 
twigs or a handful of pebbles gathered on 
the school grounds. If helps are not at 
hand the resourceful teacher will not be 
long without substitutes improvised from 
materials available. Let us strive for 
adaptability and the fullest development of 
intelligence. 

The true artist takes a little pigment, a 
brush, and a stretcher of canvas, and, after 
a little, rounds out an object of beauty that 
is pleasant to contemplate. The savage 
potentate would knock a hole in the canvas, 
wear the stretcher around his neck, stick 
the brush thru his nose, plaster the pigment 



KEEPING PUPILS BUSY 29 

on his person and make himself superla- 
tively ridiculous with the misused materials. 
Let us strive to be artists. 



VI 
RECESSES 

The need of a recess in the middle of a 
session or the lack of it, is something of an 
indication of the quality of the teaching in 
a school. If the teacher be an old-fash- 
ioned routinist, a dull and prosy parrot 
trainer, his httle poUies will get tired of 
repeating their want of a cracker, and then 
the ten or fifteen minutes of relaxation will 
be found to be an absolute necessity. But, 
on the other hand, if the teacher is wide 
awake and up-to-date and makes every mo- 
ment of the session interesting, little need 
of the intermission will be found, as the 
recreation that comes of a change of occu- 
pation will be continuously enjoyed. Under 
such a teacher the "rush" at recess is not 
a "storming out to play," but is a gather- 
ing about the teacher's desk to glean more 
of that which has been dropped during the 
period, or a grouping of classes for a com- 
parison of notes, so that nothing of that in 
wliich the interest has been centered may 
be lost. 

In many of the rural districts it would 
be an unpardonable heresy for the teacher 
to discontinue recesses. I, therefore, never 

30 



RECESSES 31 

left the regulation allotment of playtime 
oif the schedule, but left the matter to be 
decided by a vote of the school ; and, hap- 
pily, almost invariably a large majority 
decided to continue sessions without inter- 
missions. In a way, I have measured my 
influence and usefulness in a school by this 
delicate but unmistakable barometer, the 
popular will. 

In winter, when country schools are the 
largest, I seldom had more than a brief 
breathing moment when the school-room 
was thrown open for needed ventilation and 
as quickly closed for a resumption of work. 
When the season changed, and the weather 
became milder, and the school reduced to 
an attendance of the younger children, the 
recesses became longer and more regularly 
an institution, and on very warm or very 
fine days often a full fifteen minutes' al- 
lowance was given. 

As in the country very young children 
are sent to school to remain there all day, 
to relieve them of inevitable weariness, I 
gave them frequent and lengthy play spells 
out of doors when the weather permitted, 
allowing them their own will as to when 
they should return. I seldom had to call 
them; for, tiring of play, or curious to 
know what was going on in the school- 
room, they would steal quietly in and up 
to their seats, and surprise me by being 
there, where I had not expected them, when 
wanted for an exercise. 



32 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

When I first began teaching, I was prim 
enough and foolish enough to imagine that 
boys and girls should not be allowed to 
have recesses together, and consequently 
deprived myself of the aiding corrective 
that resides in a mingling of the sexes, and 
had a sterner struggle to keep the order 
and morale of the school at par. Of course, 
circumstances may sometimes be such that 
it would be better to have separate recesses, 
but they are a nuisance and a relic of that 
barbarism that excluded women from male 
assemblages, — perhaps wisely in the middle 
ages, because the action and the conversa- 
tion of the Launcelots and Galahads were 
far from fit to be witnessed by the Viviens 
and the Guiniveres. Happily a higher 
chivalry has been developed, with a loftier 
conception and a more earnest and intelli- 
gent quest of the Grail, than was possessed 
by the knights who reveled at the round 
table. 

Any privilege or any usage in school 
management should be considered in its re- 
lation to the physical, mental, and moral 
well-being of the pupils ; and in the matter 
of recesses, m my mind, they are only ad- 
visable when the pupils have been prepared 
to make the best use of them. In spring, 
summer, or autumn, if your boys and girls 
use the few moments in wildly rushing 
themselves into a heat and excitement that 
require an hour to reduce to normal temper- 
ature and calm, then recesses are more of 



RECESSES S3 

a detriment than a benefit, and regardless 
of prejudice I should discontinue the lib- 
erty until I could educate the pupils in a 
proper use of play time and up to an ap- 
preciation of the privilege. It would be 
vastly better in winter for the pupils to 
remain in the school-room if they know no 
better than to deliberately wet their feet, 
or if they snowball until half frozen and 
have to spend an hour perched about the 
stove drying and warming, or, escaping 
notice, have to sit thru the remainder of 
the session uncomfortable, with their health 
in jeopardy, and unfitted to carry on the 
work which is the main object of their 
presence at school. All work and nO' play 
makes Jack a dull boy, indeed; but if in 
any way Jack's play impairs his capability 
for work, it is better that he run the risk 
of becoming dull. 

For weeks together my recesses were mo^ 
mentary affairs for ventilation, to avoid the 
"Please^may-I-go-out .f^" nuisance, and the 
forming of the terrible and contagious 
drink habit, and for a brief and rapid 
preparation for the work to be continued; 
and this was not in obedience to the ukase 
of despotism, but in submission, as has 
been intimated, to X)Ox populi in a little gov- 
ernment whose motto was Pro Bono Publico, 



VII 
UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 

In every country community there are 
more "sets" than sects ; — in truth, there 
are usually several sets in each sect, and 
am sorry to say it, but it is true, each "set" 
secretly carries a chip on its shoulder for 
all of the others. Yet there is occasion for 
hope, for all kneel on the Sabbath and with 
one accord beseech deliverance from "envy, 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," 
and implore forgiveness for their "enemies, 
persecutors, and slanderers." There is 
usually no open hostility among the fac- 
tions, and the casual observer would de- 
clare the community to be in a state of 
idyllic calm and accord ; but the doctor and 
the school-master know only too well that 
this calm is the calm before a possible 
storm, — the strained stillness of an armed 
neutrality, whose masked batteries are 
manned (should I have said "womaned".'^) 
and ready for terrific and pitiless carnage 
at a moment's notice. Like parents, like 
pupils. Mrs. Jones barely nods to Mrs. 
Brown in public, and in private they criti- 
cise and condemn each other without mercy. 

34 



UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 35 

Their children, lacking, thank heaven! the 
"discretion" of the parents, fight openly, 
or openly refuse to associate. 

There is one in town with the scar of an 
indiscretion as much in evidence as tho she 
wore Hester Prynne's scarlet letter on her 
breast. Her fatherless child goes to school, 
— an innocent boy, and such was the King 
of Kings, — and the school becomes Sanhe- 
drim and Roman tribunal in one and would 
crucify him. The children of the rich mill 
owner and the children of the farmer wear 
better clothes and have better lunches than 
the other children and also have not a little 
money to spend at the store for sweets. 
With a following of sycophants, they form 
a "set" and become as important and as 
supercilious as it is possible to become, even 
tho unstimulated in this direction by home 
example and influence. The editor's, the 
lawyer's, and the minister's boys and girls 
form the brainy "set" and put on airs ac- 
cordingly, and from necessity of self-pro- 
tection, the poor and the dull boys and girls 
ally themselves to one or another of the 
dominant factions or become tribes or in- 
dividual representatives of the house of 
Ishmael. Without going farther we have 
factors enough for a problem of "unifica- 
tion" that is as difficult to solve as is the 
one you give the "smart" boy on the rela- 
tion between the cost of a jackknife and the 
number of cubic feet in a brush heap ; and 
if, like the lad, we are unable to solve it, we 



36 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

in the end will be made to feel as cheap 
as he. 

We have the factors, but where are the 
parentheses for uniting them in one, — ^we 
have the elements, but how shall we combine 
them in one smooth, homogenous fluid, in 
which each will have lost its peculiar un- 
pleasant property and will have gained in 
the mingling an added quality of strength 
for the mellifluous liquid, — a harmonious 
and united school? 

Several years ago, I was called to a 
neighborhood that had been in a state of 
internecine discord for over twenty years. 
I was told that I would not stay there six 
months, as many an older and more ex- 
perienced teacher had won only the title 
"yearling" in the ungracious community. 
I found on getting acquainted that the peo- 
ple were not as bad as they had been pic- 
tured, — that they were an average aggre- 
gation with the aims and interests and 
ideals usual to dwellers in isolated localities, 
but that, for some forgotten reason of of- 
fense or injury, every man's hand was 
against every other man's, and neighborli- 
ness and the graces of kindness and good 
will that make life in the country endurable 
were unknown. I found there were about 
as many feuds as there were families, and 
that Killkenny kittens were the products of 
this condition, and with them I had to deal. 
I began with a strict impartiality, making 
as much of one as of another, and said not 



UNIFYING THE SCHOOL 37 

a word to anyone about anybody. I did not 
recognize that discord existed, and innor 
cently (?) devised plans that took the chil- 
dren of one family into the home af an- 
other. By constant care and watchfulness 
that thwarted any attempt at meanness on 
the part of one youthful coterie to another, 
and by joining in and directing many 
things of a social nature among the older 
boys and girls, they came to forget, in my 
constant example and earnest teaching on 
the topic, that one was not as good as an- 
other, and to learn that spiteful bickerings 
were unprofitable and prevented the enjoy- 
ment of the pleasure and profit to be ob- 
tained thru a community of interests and 
action. I could reach the community only 
thru the children, as I could not call on all 
and therefore called on none; but I was 
assisted in an unexpected way by a young 
evangelist, who, happily, organized a so- 
ciety of the undenominational Christian 
Endeavor, and this soon worked in the 
home what I was working in the school, and 
I am told that to this day there is no hurt 
or destruction in that httle rural mount, — 
that the lion and the lamb still lie down 
together. 

I taught lessons of a practical broadness 
that made any smallness or meanness seem 
beneath the boys and girls. I taught a 
charity that overlooks defects of body or 
of character, — ^that inspires pity for and 
tenderness toward the unfortunate and 



S8 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

gives birth to the desire to help better by 
kindness and consideration the condition 
of all with whom daily contact is a neces- 
sity. I taught Ruskin, and, tho unworthy, 
I taught Christ ; and of the four years that 
I taught in that community, I had three 
years and more of a harmony that in many 
of its resolutions was satisfying to the soul 
thru sights seen and sounds heard. Every 
discord but one was a "discord of the 
seventh" that added strength and beauty 
to the symphony of the years. 

Need I add, in closing, that the teacher 
must infuse himself into his school, his com- 
munity, in uniting factions, — need I add 
that it is love, divine love, that is just as 
well as merciful, that alone is able to unite 
antagonisms in such a manner that each 
loses its disagreeable elements? 



VIII 
PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 

Without support in the home, the few 
hours of influence in the school will scarcely 
suffice to counteract the many hours of re- 
laxed discipline outside. "We plan for our 
powers the divinest we can, — ^we do with our 
powers the supremest we may," and then 
are discouraged because we do not succeed, 
— because there is a counter current of op- 
position, — an eddy unseen, that snatches 
success out of the swift flow of our zeal and 
delays it in idle circlings until we are in 
despair. 

To keep your school together, proving 
that you are master of the situation, over- 
riding opposition, superior to fear and not 
to be bribed by favor, is a very difficult task 
to accomplish gracefully, the while you are 
striving to keep free from bitterness toward 
betrayers and attempting to win their 
esteem. 

"There are two ways to victory," says 
Thoreau, "to strive, or to yield ;" and while 
it is not in exact harmony with the meaning 
of the hermit of Maiden Pond, yet, in these 
days, many teachers are holding their posi- 
tions seemingly in great favor thru yield- 

39 



40 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

ing to the caprices of their pupils, know- 
ing that the children are the rulers in many 
of the homes. But what becomes of con- 
science and that happiness which is the 
true reward of duty well done, — what, when 
this tide of false popularity turns, as it 
surely will ? There is another way of yield- 
ing, — probably the one intended by the 
great naturalist, — expressed by Espinoza: 
"He who Hves according to reason, endeav- 
ors to the utmost of his powers to outweigh 
another man's hate, anger, or despite 
against him with love or high-mindedness. 
He who chooses to avenge wrong by re- 
quiting it wdth hatred, is assuredly miser- 
able. But he who strives to cast out hatred 
by love, may fight his fight in joy and con- 
fidence. As for those he doth conquer, they 
yield to him jo^^^fully, and that not because 
their strength f aileth, but because it is in- 
creased." 

In every community there are people who 
look upon the teacher as the natural enemy 
of their children and ^dgorously uphold 
them in any misdemeanor or impudence, 
and listen raptly to the wildest misrepre- 
sentations. Tho having repeatedly pun- 
ished unmercifully their children for mis- 
chief and falsifying, they inconsistently 
deny the teacher the exercise of even the 
mildest forms of corrective. We all know 
that the average child is a little angel ; but 
we also have a misty reminiscence of the 
early days of Lucifer. There are the peo- 



PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 41 

pie who do not think it necessary for their 
children to attend school regularly, and 
who think that punctuahty is far from 
being an absolute necessity. There are 
those who neglect, day after day, to pro- 
vide proper books for their children, — 
there are those who wanted some other 
teacher hired and are trying their very 
best to make life as nearly unbearable for 
the present incumbent as they can ; and, 
thank goodness ! there are those who, if he 
deserves it, stand at the teacher's back thru 
thick and thin, and without whom in many 
instances life would be almost unbearable. 
This latter class are among the old-fash- 
ioned folk who believe that children should 
be seen and not heard at all times, — who 
believe in having not only the respect, but 
also the love and confidence of their chil- 
dren, — who see that their children keep 
good company and are at home after 
nightfall, — who know how lessons have 
been learned and recited at school thru 
daily interest in school work, who discour- 
age tale^bearing with its fungi of exagger- 
ation, and who strive in every way to aid 
instead of to multiply the cares of the in- 
structor. 

How to gain the co-operation of the op- 
position and still retain dignity, self-re- 
spect, and supreme control is the problem. 
Some teachers yield, but not in the manner 
first instanced at the outset of this brief 
talk, but, apparently, by not declaring 



42 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

open war. Thru firmness and the exercise 
of inherent quahties of attraction, they 
finally draw unto themselves a following 
that is productive of books for the bookless, 
of notes of explanation and apology for 
detained pupils, of demands for severe cor- 
rection for the obstreperous, of bouquets 
for the desk, and of invitations that turn 
life from funeral marches to the grave into 
an endless procession of triumph in which, 
so to speak, each former enemy is at the 
teacher's chariot tail, so scorched are they 
in mind by the particular brand of coals 
that have been heaped upon their heads. 

Love and patience are virtues only up to 
a certain point, and when they have been 
exhausted they are vices, weakening and 
degrading. Open war is sometimes inevi- 
table, and what cannot be gained thru uni- 
versal and uniform courtesy, — thru warm- 
hearted interest in pupils and parents, — 
thru evident good fellowship and ever ap- 
parent sincerity and ability, can often be 
gained by a bold stand on dignity and 
authority, — ^by an exhibition of the right- 
eous wrath that drove the desecrators from 
the temple and that restored the peace and 
the sanctity that had been profaned. . A 
friend of mine, who had traveled in the 
west in the days of the gold fever and who 
had seen a deal of rough life, used to say : 
"Never argue with a drunken man ; if he 
insults you, knock him down, — it will sober 
him into a repentance for the meanness he 



PARENTAL CO-OPERATION 43 

felt toward you and didn't dare perpetrate 
when he was sober." People drunken with 
envy, hatred, or conceit need knock down 
arguments often to insure you from im- 
munity from insult. 

The principle to be maintained is the 
kind of dignity most admired in your com- 
munity. Attempt to satisfy the people 
thoroly that you are first competent and 
then kind, — that you wish to be friendly 
with everybody, — ^that you are not a prig 
or a snob, but a good fellow, — that your 
interests are the interests of the community, 
and that you are willing to go more than 
half way to be friendly and helpful; and, 
somehow, the obstruction sand and gravel 
will work out of life's little stream, and you 
will glide on to a degree of success that will 
be gratifying and compensating. 



IX 

[ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 

When I was a lad, I attended a school 
in which I was one of the teachers and in 
which nearly all of the "big boys" and 
"big girls" took turns in running things. 
The neighborhood did not appreciate our 
efforts, however kindly put forth, and when 
the term closed, our master was gathered 
unto his predecessors and another ruled in 
his stead. Remembering this when I came 
to teach, only when closely pressed for time 
and for some easily-managed recitation, did 
I ever call on my older pupils for assist- 
ance, and I have had many that have made 
good teachers and who are to-day in the 
profession, which they are ornamenting. 

In each school where I have been, I have 
been so fortunate as to have among the 
pupils one or more of those large-hearted, 
womanly girls,- — the material from wliich 
good mothers are made, — who shared with 
me the respect of all, and who quietly gath- 
ered the httle ones under her wings, and 
with the softening, soothing influence that 
only a good woman can exert, has smoothed 
the rough places, made the crooked paths 
straight, and has driven away the showers 

44 



ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 45 

by the sunlight of her presence. Having 
the affection of the wayward, to whom her 
example is a corrective, she is a valuable 
aid and worthy of confidence and every 
privilege that can be granted. She is the 
girl to whom you can safely send the little 
and even the larger folk for a recitation 
when time presses. Do not let the interest 
and pleasure manifested by your pupils 
under her ministration make you jealous, 
for she merits a nobler sentiment. We all 
know this girl, but do we all make the 
developing use of her that we could and 
should .f' Do we strengthen her, or do we 
estrange? 

How many of us have a secret service 
bureau.^ How many of us have the dis- 
cretion and the self-control necessary for 
making a service "secret" and effective ; 
and how many of us have the tact necessary 
for properly using boys and girls as de- 
tectives without letting them know they are 
youthful Pinkertons .f^ Do you make a 
handle of tattling? If you do, you en- 
courage a spirit that makes liars of your 
pupils and will make you distrusted and 
disrespected by everybody. Haven't you 
had boys and girls in whom you confided, 
with whom you held confidential conversa- 
tions about the school and the pupils, who 
gave you, if you have the art of hearing 
words between words, "pointers" about 
things of which you never dreamed and 
which forewarned you of threatened dis- 



46 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

orders or enabled you to correct abuses 
that had existed without your knowledge? 
In a word, are you "one of the boys" — 
one of the girls, — yourself, while being the 
cautious and watchful teacher almost un- 
consciously underneath? If you are, then 
you are the chief of a secret service bureau, 
who will often surprise the school and the 
community by courses of action that will 
show that you "know what is in the wind" 
and will win the "well done" of the gods 
of the rural community expressed in the 
words, "He was up to snuiF." 

I have always made it a point to study 
the special talents or bents of my pupils 
and to elevate (?) them to "positions of 
trust and responsibility" for which they 
seemed best fitted for the good of our little 
school commune. Some of my girls have 
been musical. Such played the organ or the 
piano for marching and for opening and 
other exercises, and diversified our daily 
program with solos and duos on invitation 
or vote of the school. Some of my boys 
have been mechanical in turn, and such 
have been allowed to do odd jobs of tinker- 
ing, or make some simple device or appa- 
ratus needed for some lesson. 

One of my boys in a certain school was 
a natural-born artist. By universal con- 
sent, he had control of one blackboard, and 
never less than three times a week he spent 
a part of the noon hour in materializing 
his ideas in various colors. As an instance: 



ASSISTANCE FROM PUPILS 4*T 

One day I came in, and there was the then 
celebrated locomotive "999," with coaches 
attached ready to steam out of the Grand 
Central station on her flight to Buffalo. 
Here was a chance for an interesting lesson 
not to be lost, as the children seldom saw 
a locomotive, being miles from any railroad. 
On the birthdays we celebrated, he would 
reproduce portraits and views in connection 
with them with marvelous skill, and in these 
ways made himself a valuable and a valued 
ally. Three times a week I counted on his 
aid for some subject for a brief opening 
lesson; and he, being of an earnest and 
thoughtful nature, and a thoroly good boy, 
I seldom made a suggestion for his work, 
or put any condition of restraint upon his 
efforts. I kept a list of subjects from 
which to conduct an occasional review. Per- 
haps it would have been better to have 
guided this boy's efforts into a connected 
series ; but I felt that his genius was spon- 
taneous, and that the element of novelty 
in each surprise in this lack of system was 
better, because it gave the task of develop- 
ing the lesson he set for us an interest of 
the extemporaneous, inspiring both teacher 
and pupil to their best effort. 

Do your pupils do jury duty.? You may 
not be aware of it, but they do settle every 
case that comes before the pedagogical 
tribunal, and try not only the culprit, but 
the judge and executor of the court's de- 
crees, and woe to the one or to the other if 



48 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

anger instead of due mercy tempers jus- 
tice, if the tyrant instead of the teacher 
pronounces the sentence and inflicts the 
penalty! Knowing this, I have used my 
pupils as a bench of judges for trying 
cases, allowing a discussion of the crime 
(?) and for fixing the proper degree and 
the nature of the expiation to be demanded ; 
and I found strength in adapting our civics 
lessons to the government of our little re- 
public. 

I have always had a ministry or cabinet 
composed of my better, more intelligent 
pupils with whom I have discussed school 
polity and considered plans ; and thus have 
won a co-operation and assistance that 
could have been gained in no other way, 
and without for one moment degrading my 
dignity or losing the essential leadership 
and control. 



JOURNALISM IN A DISTRICT 
SCHOOL 

The idea of a school paper, or review, is 
not a new one. This class of periodical 
usually has for its object the preservation 
of class gossip, or outlines the work and 
relates the occurrences of the school com- 
munity of which it is the mouthpiece. But 
The Maple Grove Gazette, of which I shall 
speak briefly, was a semi-monthly news- 
paper having for its editors and reporters 
the school children of an isolated country 
district. The only part I took in the affair 
was that of censor-manager, thoroughly be- 
lieving in the wisdom of the French in in- 
stituting such an office, provided, of course, 
its privileges are not abused. 

I secured as editor-in-chief a girl of six- 
teen who had displayed much good taste 
in the selection of her reading, and whose 
efforts in composition had clearly indicated 
a desire for saying the most in the fewest 
words. There were others in the school 
who had livelier fancies in producing, but 
I felt they were not to be implicitly trusted 
to keep the erratic staff within bounds and 
to enforce rigidly the rules of purity, per- 

49 



50 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

spicacity, and propriety, on whose strict 
observance we insisted. 

The editor carefully perused the pile of 
papers I kept on my desk, among which was 
Our Times, on whose columns of condensed 
matter tremendous onslaughts were made 
with the shears. The Scientific American, 
Harper's WeeUy, The Youth's Company- 
ion, St, Nicholas, The Ladies' Home 
Journal, The American Agriculturist, The 
Country Gentleman, and Good Housekeep- 
ing, to say nothing of local and other minor 
pubhcation too numerous to mention, were 
the mines from which the boys and girls in 
their homes drew forth treasure and gems 
for our bi-monthly enrichment. 

At recess, if we were having recesses, or 
at noon and after school, the editor would 
confer with her staff, and one or another 
would gravely discuss with her the chances 
this matter or that would have of being 
generally interesting or profitable to the 
subscribers, as they fancifully termed the 
pupils of the school. 

One week would be devoted to this sort 
of preparation, and then the editor would 
make out a table of contents for the next 
issue, and on my approval the subjects 
would be assigned to the several assistants. 
No article was allowed to be copied. It had 
to be rewritten from memory, after its main 
features had been assimilated by a careful 
reading, and had to be expressed in the 
pupil's own language. 



JOURNALISM m A DISTRICT SCHOOL 51 

Others would be detailed to gather brief 
news items of the immediate vicinity; and 
here the utmost care had to be exercised, 
for gossip of the petty, rural sort would 
often creep in, and this had to be supi- 
pressed, or our paper and our school would 
have gone to pieces in a hurry. I thmk 
in this one department a most valuable 
work was done; for boys and girls were 
taught, as they could be most easily, their 
duty to their neighbor in a practical appli- 
cation of the Golden Rule, that is the one 
essential element in producing harmony in 
a country community. 

Boys and girls are not devoid of a sense 
of humor, by any means, and early efforts 
at being funny in the paper were rather 
painful. Without the clearer discrimina- 
tion and taste that come with culture,^ a 
coarseness pervaded their fun that was in- 
excusable. This again offered a sure means 
of elevation morally and intellectually, for 
expurgation and the reason for it soon 
taught that nothing should be amusing 
that contains the slightest double entente, 
or that is rough and impure in expression. 
When the telegraph editor had culled the 
most important news from his "ticker," a 
New York semi-weekly, — ^when the poetry 
editor had clipped or copied those verses 
that had appealed to his growing apprecia- 
tion of beauty, — when all of the various de- 
partments had fulfilled their functions, 
then the chief took the mass of manuscript 



52 SCHOOL, IIANAGEMENT 

in hand and went through it carefully to 
note, mark, and make suggestions for elimi- 
nations and corrections, and I have had the 
pleasure of having whole stanzas of my own 
verse, published annonymously, crossed out 
by the inexorable blue pencil in the hands 
of the clear-eyed girl, who, unconscious of 
the author's identity, asked him if he didn't 
think the lines were somewhat superfluous, 
when we together went through the work 
for a final examination. 

On Friday afternoon, the items of the 
issue having been arranged, under their 
departmental headings, the editor would 
read the aggregation to the school, each 
member of which was eager to hear what 
the others had written, and an interest 
grew that incited a rivalry as to who could 
find and best re-write the most interesting 
matter. 

At first, criticism had to be mildly given, 
but soon open discussion of the work could 
be tolerated, and, properly governed, made 
profitable, if not at all times logical and 
influenced by a full knowledge of the finer 
proprieties. 

An advertising department had early to 
be discontinued, as the fertihty of the 
youthful imagination knew no bounds re- 
garding property to be sold or exchanged 
and regarding situations wanted. 

The venture was a success from its first 
issue to its last, and it had an influence on 
each subscriber far greater than any other 



JOURNALISM IN A DISTRICT SCHOOL 53 

periodical in the land, because each sub- 
scriber was a contributor, not receiving ed- 
ucation so much through its columns as 
through the reflection of what he put, there 
himself, and by far the greatest benefit 
from what he was not allowed to pubhsh. 

In the latter part of the year much origi- 
nal work was approved and used, and one 
story from the lowly sheet found its way 
into The Teachers' Institute, the predeces- 
sor of Teachers' Magazine, to be repro- 
duced, doubtless, by thousands of little folk 
throughout the land. No one knows how 
many well written items for the local county 
papers and the farm papers can be accred- 
ited to the influence and training of the 
Maple Grove Gazette, 

Its. editor is a married woman ; its con- 
tributors are scattered far and wide; its 
manuscript pages, Hke those of "The 
Ephemeris" of Pompeii, are ashes; the 
visible evidences of its being have been de- 
stroyed. But, as none can tell to what ex- 
tent its ashes have beautified the plant life 
into which they have inevitably found their 
way, so none can estimate the broadening 
tendency to beautiful ideas and usefulness 
the conscientious occupation of a few lei- 
sure hours of that year may have eff*ected. 
Certainly I have never used an extra exer- 
cise that gave me less labor and more pleas- 
ure, and that I felt was more freighted with 
future possibilities than the bi-monthly 
preparation and discussion of The Maple 
Grove Gazette, 



XI 

CHARACTER IN HIDING 

A BACKWARD glaiice to early education, 
in the contemplation of its results in the 
characters. of the men about us, might of- 
ten prove beneficial to many of us who, in 
our zeal, often feel that the essence of our 
best eifort has been dissipated and lost. 

I am an admirer of a certain young me- 
chanic of my acquaintance, — of his intense 
f eehng of moral obhgation as a citizen, and 
of his strong sentiment of spiritual re- 
sponsibility. His present development has 
often been a matter for wonder to me ; for, 
from early hfe, he has been thrown into 
associations that have wrecked thousands. 
It was all clear to me the other day, how- 
ever, when I stepped into his shop, unno- 
ticed, and found him talking to himself. 

What was he saying? Was it a passage 
from a book he was then reading in leisure 
hours ? Was it a section of the "Insurance 
Bill" in which he was deeply interested? 

No: it was the concluding Hne of a 
temperance poem in one of the old "Sand- 
ers" school readers. 

Finishing, he turned, and, beholding me, 
exclaimed: "Ah- Saunders, listening to my 

54 



CHAUACTEE, IN HIDING 55 

declamation, eh? Well, I didn't think you 
would turn eavesdropper." Continuing, he 
said: "Do you know, all of the pieces in 
my old reading books come back to me, as 
I work here at the bench? 

"There's 'The Rapids Are Before You' 
and 'The Little Boy That Died,' and the 
old fables and proverbs, and a host of 
things I never understood at school whose 
meaning comes now in a flash. 

"Say, I don't believe you teachers pay 
enough attention to reading. Now, I'll 
tell you what I mean. You don't explain 
the lesson as carefully as you ought, — ^that 
is, they didn't, when I went to school. 

"I was a first-rate reader : could call all 
of the words and mind the punctuation; 
but I didn't know anything about what I 
was reading. I was always wondering 
about the meaning of the combination of 
words, and only after I left school did the 
ideas take definite form." 

We talked over many selections familiar 
to both, and I left him, wondering at the 
solid structure the old fellows had so care- 
lessly built, and wondering if the effort 
we are expending on the reading lesson, — 
on every lesson, — ^would be rewarded in 
proportion. I am a rational optimist. 

When we come to consider that the read- 
ing lesson is the first to be impressed, that 
first impressions last a life-time, and that 
this lesson is the most laboriously wrought 
and the most frequently repeated by the 



56 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

pupil, does it not seem, most worthy of care- 
ful study, from the selection of a text-book 
to the preparation of the lesson? 

When the Shah-Jehan wished to build 
a shrine to the memory of Noor-Jehan, 
"The Light of the World," he sought out 
the best Spanish architect of the Seven- 
teenth Century. 

The builder went to India, displayed his 
design, built the foundation, and then dis- 
appeared. For seven long years the prince 
sought the missiag architect in vain, and 
then one day he reappeared and finished 
his work. 

To-day, on the marshy banks of the 
Jumna, stands a glimpse of heaven without 
a flaw, because the foundation had time to 
settle in the soft soil before the weight of 
the Taj -Mahal was superimposed. 

Do we burden the plastic mind with finely 
wrought casuistry? 

Let us select our readers for the lessons 
that will give a firm foundation, and then 
wait until the child mind can sustain the 
larger analysis, — the column and the in- 
tricate arabesque of the design that we 
have set so high as an ideal. 



XII 
OUR GLORIOUS HERITAGE 

At any season of the year a contempla- 
tion of nature will be amply rewarded, but 
in Spring the varying tints that clothe hill 
and vale inspire in their tenderness those 
emotions that prove our kinship to the 
divine and those thoughts of beauty that 
are the voices of divinities within. The 
most stolid and illiterate appreciate and 
grope for the words to express that which 
is stirring in the unexplored recesses of 
their souls, and, lost in the labyrinth of 
the manifold, the anthem of their silent 
adoration mingles with the incense from a 
million buds, that sweetly, tho invisibly, 
arises to caress the mighty groins of the 
temple arch sprung so sublimely overhead. 

The man of culture is somewhat removed 
from this mere sensual appeal, for he has 
the power of knowledge which makes him 
master of this heritage, accumulated and 
enriched by the heroic struggle of the ages ; 
and, in the enjoyment of his sacred birth- 
right, his soul is broadened to that god- 
like philanthropy which embraced the chil- 
dren and demanded their development in 
His name. 

57 



58 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

It is this sentiment that has proAdded a 
breath of fresh air for thousands of stifled 
little ones, but more than this all children 
need. The "Complex Cliinese toy" that in- 
spires wonder, but only a degree of joy, in 
the unopened mind of city or of country 
child, must be taken apart and carried piece 
by piece into the dim recesses of the little 
brain, until mere wonder and admiration 
are supplanted by the pure dehght the 
Creator must feel in knowing how the "toy" 
was fashioned, and, finished, made to go. 

Take the boys and girls into the country, 
where at every step an object appears for 
an impressive lesson. Let them breathe the 
ozone tinctured by the breath of hemlock 
and of pine. Let them pluck the anemone 
and hunt the arbutus. But surprise them 
with a feast of beauties underlying all of 
these. 

The season belongs to the children, and 
they have an inalienable right to all of its 
treasures ; and we, who have reveled in 
these riches, will be greatly enriched in 
sharing them. 

The saddest thought of the season to me 
is that so many country children seem 
utterly oblivious to their surroundings, and 
I never enter a school-room without feeling 
that I should attempt to arouse the chil- 
dren to an appreciation of the grace and 
beauty by which they are encompassed in 
every moment of their freedom out of doors. 

City children long for the beauties and 



OUR GLORIOUS HERITAGE 59 

the privileges of the country, and the need 
to-day is the awakening of the country 
child to the glories and advantages of his 
environment. 

In these buds of future men and women 
are the possibilities of a rich and rewarding 
harvest. Awaken them ; warm them ; show 
them the wonders of the long past of prep- 
aration for the kingdom they inherit with 
the flowers ; and point them to a material 
progress, as well as to a progress beyond 
that of the finite plant, flower, and fruit,— 
that progress in the evolution of the mani- 
fold that will not cease even when man un- 
folds, an amaranthine blossom for the 
adornment of an eternal destiny. 



XIII 
EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 

The need of the rural districts in educa- 
tion is immediate, and the call is insistent 
and should be at once answered inteUigent- 
Ij, if agriculture is to be re-estabhshed as 
a foundation of our national importance 
and if rural districts are to be repopulated. 

The attractiveness of those occupations 
which pay large rewards for intelKgence 
has lured the boys and the girls, generation 
after generation, to the cities, until in the 
East over 70 per cent, of the population 
is crowded into the towns and less than 
30 per cent, is left to lonesome hving in 
districts more than half depopulated. 

There is no reason why agriculture intel- 
ligently pursued, — pursued in the Hght of 
modern discoveries, with modern imple- 
ments, after modem methods, and with 
sectional limitations and modern market 
needs in view, — should not pay as large, or 
larger, returns than the average small 
business in the city, or the average pro- 
fessional occupation. In every instance, an 
agricultural specialty intelligently followed 
will be far better rewarded than any clerk- 
ship in any city. 

60 



EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 61 

For long years past, teachers and foolish 
parents have held up a false picture to 
the youth of the country. They have dilat- 
ed on the country boy who has gone to the 
great city and has become a great lawyei, 
a great physician, musician, merchant 
prince, or a captain of finance, forgetful 
of the fact that few country boys from the 
great mass have reached a point where they 
have become noticeable, still fewer are high 
in finance, and none are in "high" finance 
whose characters would exalt them as mod- 
els for emulation. Teachers have let the 
glamor of the limelight fall on the isolated 
cases of the country boy who has made a 
hit in the city, while all around the small 
disc of light upon the curtain, but hidden 
in the contrasted intensity of darkness and 
obscurity, are the thousands and tens of 
thousands of country boys and girls who 
have gone to the city and have met nothing 
but hardship, disappointment, and failure, 
to say nothing of fates more dismal, dis- 
tressing, or disgraceful. 

The time has come in rural education to 
show both sides of the city: its East side 
as well as its West, — its First avenue as 
well as its Fifth. The time has come for 
thq tidal wave that has so long flowed city- 
ward to be reflected from the congested 
canons of commerce and to flow more calm- 
ly back toward the wellsprings from which 
its particles were drawn. 

The need, then, in rural education is a 



62 SCHOOL. MANAGEMENT 

school properly equipped and having a 
trained, conscientious, and discriminating 
teacher, — a school in which, every human 
relation is placed in its proper position 
and shown in its actual proportion, — a 
school in which the beauty and sublimity 
of nature shall be given prominence, and 
in which the dignity, attractiveness, and 
profit of rural occupations shall be given 
their proper value, — a school in which the 
child is taught the practical things of life ; 
is taught something of the principles of 
government and of successful agriculture, 
the foundation of all national prosperity. 

I do not mean that a desire for higher 
education should be stifled, but, on the con- 
trary, as I have urged elsewhere, it should 
be stimulated, but not by false ideals, — by 
firing the youthful imagination with false 
views of human greatness in artificial lines, 
leading to the erection of false hopes and 
the cherishing of idle dreams that lead too 
often to dissatisfaction, despair, and flat 
failure. 

How often you have heard it remarked 
of a college graduate who has failed to con- 
nect with some useful occupation : "There 
goes a five thousand dollar education 
wasted on a fifty cent man." The fact is, 
that there goes a most useful citizen side- 
tracked by false conceptions of what spells 
success and by improperly formed ideals, 
influenced in the formative period by un- 
wise instructors or foolishly ambitious 



EDUCATION FOR USEFULNESS 63 

parents. The five thousand dollar educa- 
tion is all right, and the man is infinitely 
better off in possessing it, but the pity is 
that in getting it he did not spend some 
time in studying how to make practical use 
of it. 

This is what is being aimed at by the 
Education Department of New York State 
in introducing civics and agriculture and 
nature study into the course of instruction 
for common schools. It is a step in the 
right direction, toward the need of the 
rural communities, and is one that, if fol- 
lowed out by the teachers and supported by 
the district organizations, will have its in- 
fluence in making the country and its life 
and occupations attractive to the boys and 
girls and will eventually increase the rural 
population, improve farm values and the 
value of farm products, and, above all, the 
value and enjoyment of the inhabitants of 
rural communities in which are found the 
men and women who right the wrongs and 
maintain the tone of the nation, in which 
too often false standards have been fol- 
lowed toward apparent disaster. 

It is back to nature we must hark ; back 
to contact with the soil ; back to the simple 
life, the standards and the high purposes 
of the founders of the republic; back to 
truth and an honest strife for a true wealth 
that will represent a true prosperity. And 
on the teachers is the burden of inaugurat- 
ing the era of renewal. It is a worthy 
trust, a noble and ennobling opportunity. 



HOME LESSONS 

With your classes reduced to the small- 
est possible number, you have gained the 
great advantage of a larger allotment of 
time for each recitation, but at the outset 
you will be checked in the ampler devotion 
by the knowledge that you are encroach- 
ing on time which should be spent in study. 
You are a college or normal graduate and 
you long to revel in the pleasure of play- 
ing the professor who has forty or sixty 
minutes in which to lecture, to experiment, 
or to amphfy the day's lesson. You see so 
many opportunities for adding collateral 
strength to the recitation, — so many 
things suggest themselves for making the 
period interesting. You loved your note- 
books and clasped them close, forgetful of 
the midnight oil you burned in poring, 
delving, hoarding, that you might prepare 
yourself to appreciate the hour in the 
class-room in which your knowledge has in- 
creased and your intellect expanded in the 
manner ever new and delightful, and you 
naturally long to treat your boys and girls 
to the same enjoyments; and here let me 
say, it is possible for you to create a taste 

64 



HOME LESSONS 65 

for such pleasures in your pupils, pro- 
vided you can inspire them to a sacrifice 
of time in study at home. 

There may be but four or five of your 
twenty classes that you would or could 
treat to ampHfied recitations, and, per- 
haps, but two of the four or five lessons 
need be prepared at home ; but the alacrity 
with which your pupils in advanced grades 
acquiesce to the proposition and the assi- 
duity with which they maintain the home 
study will depend on your ability to make 
the need of extra work apparent and to 
keep the text conned an enticing prelude 
to the larger interest awaited in the class- 
room. 

I used to think it would be a grand thing 
if all of my pupils could come to school 
with lessons prepared in the way in which 
I early went to school, but I overlooked 
the possible condition into which the 
younger and more mischievous would fall 
while unoccupied with recitations. There- 
fore, I have come to think it unadvisable 
for the lower grades to have more than 
one or two lighter lessons, — preferably ex- 
ercises, — to prepare out of school, as the 
time which can be devoted to a just devel- 
opment of their recitations necessitates 
small allotments from text-books, very eas- 
ily mastered in the various branches dur- 
ing inter-recitation periods. We all know 
what a real nuisance the smart little fel- 
low becomes, — the one who gets all his les- 



66 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

sons at home, and so idles and plays in 
school that he has forgotten them by the 
time he is called upon to recite. We all 
know it is better for him to do the larger 
part of his studying in the school-room, 
under our eye and subject to our guidance. 
But for the older pupils, to whom you 
could and should give more time, as you 
feel that their days in the school-room are 
growing fewer and still fewer in the ma- 
jority of cases, the more lessons you can 
get them to prepare at home the better, if 
3^ou are going to exert to the utmost the 
broadening effect of thoroughly developed 
lessons, and do your utmost to inspire a 
desire for higher education. With a high 
school in every large village and a univer- 
sity with state assistance in free scholar- 
ships, we are not doing our duty if we do 
not do our very best to inspire our ad- 
vanced pupils to their best endeavor for 
that education which will enhance their 
pleasure in living and broaden their influ- 
ence and usefulness in the world. 

This is done most effectually, not so much 
by direct appeal as, subtly, by the hidden 
power of knowledge which the more un- 
covered in its beauty the stronger becomes 
its attraction for the pupil, until met by 
barriers of limitation, until unsatisfied, the 
pupil, grown student, finds the courage to 
lift the veil, — to leap the wall and stand 
face to face with mysteries more enticing 
than those practised by the Egyptian pas- 



HOME LESSONS 67 

tophori. They came to college, raw coun- 
try boys, from the furrow and the sheep 
trail, — from the hills of the charcoal pits 
and the obscure valleys, — with the quench- 
less light of a Maccabean miracle, their 
only attraction, a gleam in their eyes, and, 
to-day, they are preaching, pleading at 
the bar, teaching, experimenting with 
natural forces, amply repaying those who, 
in log cabins and little red schoolhouses, 
on hillside and in valley, took the time 
and trouble to make learning so attrac- 
tive that the light of pine knot and tallow 
candle falling on the page of reason illu- 
mined a vista that did not vanish in the 
labyrinth of calculus. 

Common school progress is necessarily 
slow. "It is the resultant of a multitude of 
forces aiding and opposing one another," 
says Peabody. But the individuality of 
the teacher is the strongest force amid the 
multitude. That altitude, where home les- 
sons become a necessity in your countr^'^ 
school, can be reached only by a long, 
steady pull, — ^by an unoppressive, but 
ever-expressed zeal, — ^by a constant exer- 
cise of all the faculties and artifices that 
are the attributes of a good teacher. 
When you have stimulated the conception 
of a desire, a new necessity is soon born. 

We shall have children physically too 
weak to make home lessons advisable for 
them. We shall be opposed by parents 
who think their Willies and their Kitties 



68 SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

work hard enough in the school-room, and 
discourage them from home study ; and we 
shall ever have those whom nothing but a 
stroke of lightning would inspire to grasp 
the higher thought; but, never discour- 
aged because of the limitations of speci- 
mens that defy theories and exhaust in- 
vention, we must ever strive to do the best 
we can with the means and material with 
which we have to work ; and, planting and 
watering incessantly, at last lie down in 
trust that the increase, some thirty, some 
forty, and some one hundred fold, will be 
granted by the powers we have striven to 
evoke, but which, in the last analysis, we 
are forced to admit are absolutely beyond 
our control. 



DEC 13 I90e 



